After another year-long season of rugby sevens, Canada’s national teams are off to Lima, Peru, for the Pan Am Games. Both squads have gold in their sights and both are the defending champions from the 2015 Pan Ams.

Blenheim’s Breanne Nicholas and the Canadian women have been at it since last August, while the men have only been going since October, after a players strike surrounding the structure of their program and changes to their contract.

So in terms of actual weeks, this campaign hasn’t been as long as the one that wrapped up a year ago — tip-to-tail it was 55 weeks from the beginning of the pre-season until the Rugby World Cup Sevens in San Francisco last July — but there is a feeling of weariness nonetheless.

The women’s series this year had just six stops; the Canadians finished third overall and so qualified directly for the Olympics, avoiding an extra tournament. The season was long but focused on skill development.

Over the course of the year women’s team head coach John Tait cycled a number of names for the future through the lineup and the squad he’s picked for Lima is no different.

“It’s a mix of development and series players who weren’t too banged up by the end of the season,” Tait said.

Nicholas is one of only five Canadian women who played in the final World Rugby Sevens Series event going to the Pan Am Games.

Tait is also staying behind to work with a number of young players; his assistant Morgan Williams is coaching the team at the Pan Ams.

The men, on the other hand, played 10 World Rugby Sevens Series tournaments before winning a spot for the 2020 Summer Games at a qualifying tournament earlier this month. Their season started late, and coupled with a thin roster, the men finished 11th. They also dealt with management firing popular coach Damian McGrath, replacing him with Henry Paul, albeit on an interim basis.

On top of selections forced by injuries to veteran players, the lineup Paul is leading to Lima might have had more Under-20 players were the U20s not at their world championship, he said.

“We don’t have a deep bench so we’re resting a couple guys, but will hopefully give more game time to guys that played limited minutes in Olympic qualifiers,” he explained.